Grace: I picked up my sweater from the floor and crawled back into bed. Shoving my pillow aside, I balled up the sweater to use instead. I fell asleep to the scent of my wolf. Pine needles, cold rain, earthy perfume, coarse bristles on my face. It was almost like he was there.

I'm always sure of what I do," he said. "Sometimes I was just never sure there was supposed to be a happy ending.

As the hours crept by, the afternoon sunlight bleached all the books on the shelves to pale, gilded versions of themselves and warmed the paper and ink inside the covers so that the smell of unread words hung in the air.

Without turning on the light, I went to my bed and lay down, my arm thrown across the mattress, my hand aching because Grace wasn't underneath it

He is slow, and the sea sings to us both, but he returns to me.

A novel is a conversation starter, and if the author isn't there for the after-party, both the writer and the reader are missing a lot.

Sam laughed, a funny, self-deprecating laugh. "You did read a lot. And spent too much time just inside the kitchen window, where I couldn't see you very well." "And not enough time mostly naked in front of my bedroom window?" I teased. Sam turned bright red. "That," he said, "is so not the point of this conversation.